Ann: Change of Director's Interest Notice-NEU.AX, page-15

Yes, it does seem an insignificant amount to buy on the open market considering he has 40m shares already. There is always a risk with Directors buying on the open market too - ensuring they're squeaky clean on the legal side (insider trading), plus a disclosure overhead (the need to notify the market). So for such a relatively small amount its hard to see why he would go to the effort considering all the additional hoops he would have had to jump through. In the context of the large (and perhaps unwarrented) SP drop recently his purchase perhaps only makes sense as a deliberate signal to the market that he has confidence in the company and/or thinks the shares have become undervalued. As someone else pointed out, it's also a signal (unfortunately) that any big deals or SP changing announcements are not coming very soon (otherwise he couldn't buy). However, the fact that he's gone out of his way to do something unusual like this can only be viewed positively I think.